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A walk down the city streets during the after-work hours these days, would show you a very different life of the hardworking labour class. Low cost smartphones and the latest revolution that was brought in by Jio has given all of them an access into a whole new world of entertainment and information that is creating aspiration in the section of our society that was never pulled in the economy. Though as single units, they might not look like a big change, but even a proportion of the 80 million migrant population can collectively change the face of consumption patterns in the country. Smart phones single-handedly have led to a revolution around us; the target groups are evolving, touch points for brands are changing, shopping pattern are way different, accessibility and experience are the new parameters for quality, but the world of advertising has failed to catch up with the pace of innovation.

As any new pathbreaking technological evolution is accepted by people, the brand powerhouses start adapting themselves, they are followed by the marketing firms who tweak their strategy as per the brand’s need and then the advertising companies move towards the change only when pushed. Ad-agencies are not pre-empting the changes and adapting themselves but are being the laggards, and this gap could be as much as 2 years! In an era when technology is changing with the blink of eyes, 2 years is enough of a time to make you irrelevant and you may be consumed by what is being termed as ‘Digital Darwinism’.

Look at what’s happening in the Industry, many brands are losing their equity and connect with customers and are increasingly being commodititized. For instance, let’s consider the Airline industry, the companies have lost their brand value and the entire business has become a price war zone. People choose the cheapest flight and are not willing to pay any premium for a brand. One of the reasons could be that companies have failed to tell their stories to their consumers. Once, the television was an engaging medium, people had time to spare and TV commercials served as effective medium for brand communication. But now, the world has shrunk into the 5.5” mobile screen and brand communicators have not been able to tap that medium effectively yet. Although social media campaigning and digital marketing are a ‘talk of the town’ these days, but the innovators are moving far ahead as we are trying to figure out what hashtags and keywords make users click. The Siris and Cortanas are slowly becoming an integral part of our daily lives, our gadgets are becoming more intuitive and intelligent, chatbots are taking over communication, in such times shouldn’t advertising be moving on along the same pace? How do we integrate a brand with the modern-day J.A.R.V.I.S and F.R.I.D.A.Y, and gain the customer’s mindshare?

Seamless connectivity, accessibility and quick service are no longer a tool for customer satisfaction and retention, they now are hygiene factors; if you’re not quite there, you’re off the evoked set, may be, forever. The factors like quality, better features, design innovation, though are still relevant, but they are not the only ones that would differentiate you, there are so many others offering the same. To find a place in the customer’s top of the mind recall we need the brand communication to be an experience that would keep the customers at ease and weave into their lifestyle perfectly; the message needs to be unified at various brand touch points, from the customer support service to the UI/UX experience.

A big revolution that awaits us in the very near future is Internet of Things, or IOT. We’re talking of a world where not just our phones and tablets but even cars, refrigerators, air conditioners would all be intelligent enough to know just what we need. These devices become store houses of data, giving novel insights into customer’s buying pattern, preferences, lifestyle and choice drivers: data that was previously unobtainable. The marketers will have several opportunities to deliver more relevant communication to the consumers and it might not be in any ad-format we know as of now. We’re heading towards an unpredictable era. Is the advertising industry ready for such a change, from being just a communicator to being an integral part of the service design and orchestrating a brand campaign?

We need to gear up and participate in this evolution, as the strategy guru Peter Drucker put it, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

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Today the color “green” is the most fashionable topic in the corporate circles. NGO’s, Media and politically correct politicians have made a point to juice the juice out of the word. In a way the word is abused and bruised, may leave a bitter and ugly scar one day on the face of the earth. Faking green is worst than destroying green.

This day and age, where the world is virtually live 24×7. it is difficult to fake than ever before. It just takes a tweet to expose. People are connected and empowered. You can not close your eyes and pee in your pants thinking that the world will not notice. I have been part of many conversations in the board rooms where tokenism is the biggest remedial action. Plant five trees and PR the pictures, or conduct a painting competition to staff kids on planet earth and dump the industrial waste in the Indian ocean with eyes firmly shut. This is like murdering people and putting coins in Tirupathi Hundi.

Under the garb of CSR, stupidities are been done, which are more harmful than not doing any thing, Imagine distributing 100,000 saplings and letting people killing them by not planting or watering, will you ever do this to a puppy? than why to a plant because it can’t bark back?

Almost every product carries a sign of recycling, have any of them ever recycled? why do we become suckers to such traps? Organic and Untouched by hands are other tags. It is imposible to create anything without destruction. The intelligence lies in doing things in a permissible/ lawful manner than taking backdoor options. Today if you break anything you’ll get caught because remember your destruction is just a tweet away by the Aam Admi.

Thank god for the luminous and transparent nature of green.

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When I googled “Tiger”, I got more info on Tiger Woods than Bengal tiger. I grew-up with zoos and circuses, I had no awareness or guilt in watching and marveling at captive animals. My children are different, they are more aware of environmental issues than me as a kid, thanks to their schooling, teachers and media. They refuse to see animals in zoos and circuses; I had to buy bluray “Planet Earth” series for them to watch animals up-close.

I visited Sunderban National Park and Tiger Reserve in West Bengal, last weekend with my son. At last I wanted to fulfill my desire to show my son a tiger in its natural habitat than much hated zoos. Sunderbuns is a vast delta with confluence of three great Indian rivers: Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna spanning over 10,000 sq kms with exquisite waterways, mudflats and numerous small mangrove islands.

I had been psyching my kid to be patient in spotting an animal (as he was set with his 200mm zoom camera to click panthera tigris tigris), our hired boat sailed hours together without any luck of spotting any other animal apart from monkeys, after six hours our guide from the forest department declared that the water tide was too high for the tigers or for that matter any animal to come out and advised us to visit in winter mornings as the animals come out toward the waters to sun bath and as the tide is usually low in the mornings. Helplessly we headed back.

Project Tiger was launched in 1972 to conserve the nation symbol from extinction. According to my well-informed forest guide tiger population in the country came down from 3642 in 1990 to present 1411. As per the legend he adds there were over 100,000 tigers in the world a century ago. With hung jaws we listened to the expert of the world’s largest tiger populated forest.

When I posted our status of not spotting a tiger on the Facebook; one of my friends responded by saying “Pops you may not have spotted a tiger but certainly it would have spotted you” This comment left me thinking whether I should have taken my son to this fenced mangrove islands to see the most precious and endangered species at all? Why can’t we let them live the way they are meant to live? Why this voyeurism?

Last night we were lisining to David Attenborough again.

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Like this:

Today the color “green” is the most fashionable topic in the corporate circles. NGO’s, Media and politically correct politicians have made a point to juice the juice out of the word. In a way the word is abused and bruised, may leave a bitter and ugly scar one day on the face of the earth. Faking green is worst than destroying green.

This day and age, where the world is virtually live 24×7. it is difficult to fake than ever before. It just takes a tweet to expose. People are connected and empowered. You can not close your eyes and pee in your pants thinking that the world will not notice. I have been part of many conversations in the board rooms where tokenism is the biggest remedial action. Plant five trees and PR the pictures, or conduct a painting competition to staff kids on planet earth and dump the industrial waste in the Indian ocean with eyes firmly shut. This is like murdering people and putting coins in Tirupathi Hundi.

Under the garb of CSR, stupidities are been done, which are more harmful than not doing any thing, Imagine distributing 100,000 saplings and letting people killing them by not planting or watering, will you ever do this to a puppy? than why to a plant because it can’t bark back?

Almost every product carries a sign of recycling, have any of them ever recycled? why do we become suckers to such traps? Organic and Untouched by hands are other tags. It is imposible to create anything without destruction. The intelligence lies in doing things in a permissible/ lawful manner than taking backdoor options. Today if you break anything you’ll get caught because remember your destruction is just a tweet away by the Aam Admi.